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Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Palestinians Have A Plan B For U.N. Statehood Drive

By Josh Rogin

It's
generally expected that the United States will veto the Palestinian bid for
full member status at the United Nations Security Council next month, but the
Palestinian government thinks it has an ace up its sleeve -- a workaround
option that would bypass the U.S. veto and allow it to secure U.N. recognition,
says the PLO's top representative in Washington.

"The
plan as of now is to go the United Nations to seek full member-state status for
the State of Palestine," said Maen Rashid Areikat, PLO representative to
the United States and head of the PLO mission in Washington, in a Tuesday
interview with The Cable. That means submitting a request to U.N. Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon, who will then turn that request over to the U.N. Security
Council for a vote.

But
the Security Council doesn't actually vote on the statehood question, only
whether to refer the matter to the U.N. General Assembly. If and when the
United States vetoes the idea of referring the Palestinian request to the
General Assembly, that request dies. But the Palestinians aren't planning to
stop there.

"We
hope the United States will reconsider its position and not use its veto power
against the Palestinian move at the United Nations," he said. "What
happens after a veto? There are so many other options."

Areikat
said one option under serious consideration was to invoke U.N. General Assembly
Resolution 377, known as "Uniting for Peace," which was put forth by
U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson in 1950 as a means of getting around an
obstructionist Security Council, which at the time was unable to authorize a
response to North Korea's attacks on South Korea because the Soviet Union was
rejecting all related Security Council resolutions. Resolution 377 is meant to
bypass the Security Council if it "fails to exercise its primary responsibility
for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there
appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of
aggression."

"What
we could do is go to the Security Council and say that a member state of the
Security Council, in this case the United States, has blocked our request and
therefore we are seeking Security Council support to take the issue to the U.N.
General Assembly, invoking Resolution 377," he said. "If that effort
succeeds, we will be a non-member state at the United States, not a member
state. That's the difference between the two."

Under
Resolution 377, the Palestinians would only need nine out of 15 Security
Council votes to refer their statehood request to the General Assembly, which
can then address the matter immediately (if in session) or can call an
emergency special session, as has been done 10 times since 1950, most recently
in 1997, when it was convened to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The
other option is for the Palestinian government to submit their request for full
member status to the Security Council again, forcing the U.S. to veto it over
and over.

"We
can keep on going back to the Security Council again and again," Areikat
said.

The
Obama administration has been working hard to try to convince the Palestinians
not to move forward at the United Nations. State Department Spokeswoman
Victoria Nuland said at today's briefing that Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton spoke with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas today. Also, the NSC's
Dennis Ross and Acting Special Envoy David Hale were in the Middle East and met
with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today. Hale, but not Ross, will
meet with Abbas Wednesday.

The
Clinton call was "to urge President Abbas to receive them and hear them
with open ears and to continue to work hard with us to avoid a negative
scenario in New York at the end of the month," Nuland said. "We will
continue to oppose any one-sided actions at the U.N. And we're making that
clear to both sides."

"We
respect their position, we expect them to respect our position. It's not a
secret that they are asking us not to go the United Nations. It's not a secret
that we are telling them we have to go to the United Nations," Areikat
said.

But
he said the Palestinian leadership no longer had faith in the United States or
the international community to set forth a process for peace negotiations that
both the Israeli and Palestinian sides could agree to. It's been a year since
President Barack Obama established Sept. 2011 as the deadline for setting forth
a framework for a final settlement, but "nothing has really
happened," Areikat said.

"We
have been waiting for over a year for the international community and the
United States to create a formula that will constitute a basis for resuming
negotiations and what we've seen is a total rejection on the part of Prime
Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government to engage."

Prompted
by The Cable, Areikat also responded to comments made in our interview with
Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren last week, who said that if the Palestinians
move forward with their statehood drive, all bilateral agreements between the
Israelis and the Palestinians could be at risk, including the Oslo Accords.

"The
agreement that Oren is accusing the Palestinians of violating is an agreement
that Israel has rendered obsolete in the first place," he said, referring
to the Oslo Accord specifically. "It's really shocking to hear that he is
threatening to abandon the agreements with the PLO, which also provided certain
stability to Israel and Israelis. I don't see how by abandoning the Oslo
accords Israeli will be serving its own interests."

The
State Department last week urged both sides to honor their existing agreements,
despite the new diplomatic tussle. Areikat warned that the scuttling of
standing agreements could have repercussions for Israel as well.

"If
the Israelis want to take an action, there will be a reaction. If they want to
throw away an agreement, it will also have an impact on them," he said.

Areikat
also criticized leaders of the U.S. Congress, who is threatening to cut some or
all of the $550 million in annual aid to the Palestinian government if it moves
forward with the statehood push at the U.N., calling such an action
"unwise and unconstructive."

"We
definitely hope the U.S. Congress understands the fact that any steps taken to
put pressure on the Palestinians is going to adversely affect U.S. interests
and even the interests of Israel in the region," he said. "I hate to
see members of Congress threatening to use financial support to try to
influence Palestinian positions on this issue."

-This commentary was published in The Foreign Policy on 06/09/2011-Josh Rogin reports on national security and foreign policy from
the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom, the White House to Embassy Row, for The Cable

About Me

I graduated from the French University in Beirut (St Joseph) specialising in Political and Economic Sciences. I started my working life in 1973 as a reporter and journalist for the pan-Arab magazine “Al-Hawadess” in Lebanon later becoming its Washington, D.C. correspondent. I subsequently moved to London in 1979 joining “Al-Majallah” magazine as its Deputy Managing Editor. In 1984 joined “Assayad” magazine in London initially as its Managing Editor and later as Editor-in-Chief. Following this, in 1990 I joined “Al-Wasat” magazine (part of the Dar-Al-Hayat Group) in London as a Managing Editor. In 2011 I became the Editor-In-Chief of Miraat el-Khaleej (Gulf Mirror). In July 2012 I became the Chairman of The Board of Asswak Al-Arab Publishing Ltd in UK and the Editor In Chief of its first Publication "Asswak Al-Arab" Magazine (Arab Markets Magazine) (www.asswak-alarab.com).

I have already authored five books. The first “The Tears of the Horizon” is a love story. The second “The Winter of Discontent in The Gulf” (1991) focuses on the first Gulf war sparked by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. His third book is entitled “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Balfour Promise to Bush Declaration: The Complications and the Road to a Lasting Peace” (March 2008). The fourth book is titled “How Iran Plans to Fight America and Dominate the Middle East” (October 2008) And the fifth and the most recent is titled "JIHAD'S NEW HEARTLANDS: Why The West Has Failed To Contain Islamic Fundamentalism" (May 2011).

Furthermore, I wrote the memoirs of national security advisor to US President Ronald Reagan, Mr Robert McFarlane, serializing them in “Al-Wasat” magazine over 14 episodes in 1992.

Over the years, I have interviewed and met several world leaders such as American President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Margaret Thacher, Late King Hassan II of Morocco, Late King Hussein of Jordan,Tunisian President Zein El-Abedine Bin Ali, Lybian Leader Moammar Al-Quadhafi,President Amine Gemayel of Lebanon,late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, Late Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat, Haitian President Jean Claude Duvalier, Late United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan,Algerian President Shazli Bin Jdid, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Siyagha and more...